


Vagaries

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fourth Age, Historical Inaccuracy, Post-Canon, Set in the fourth age but entirely Silmarillion focused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:36:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2765009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>History is a very tricky subject, especially when the objects of your research are Elves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vagaries

“Don't move too fast.” 

The deep, sonorous voice cut across the dizziness that made the young man sway, as he sat up from where he had been lying. A sharp pain throbbed through his head. It was particularly intense on the left side, just above his temple, so he lifted his hand to lightly brush the spot. His fingers touched the smooth cloth of a bandage, and the turgid swell of a large bump behind his ear.

“You fell from your horse. We found you unconscious in the middle of the forest” the same voice added. “You're lucky you didn't break anything”.

“How are you feeling?” a second, silkier voice asked.

The youth took several deep breaths, and gingerly raised his head to look at his saviours. They were Elves, but that was not the end of his surprise: their eyes were luminous. At first he though it was a side effect of the fall, an affliction of his sight, but he had read vivid descriptions of such eyes, of their uncanny limpidity, King Elessar's recollections of the Lady Galadriel's piercing gaze foremost among them. The luminosity meant the Elves were exceptionally ancient ones, born in the Blessed Realm itself when the Trees still stood. 

He had never expected to meet Exiles. 

“I thought-...I thought the last Noldor had left with Lord Elrond,” he hazarded, squeezing his eyes to counter the brightness and the pain in his head. The four men who sat in front of him all had coal black hair, and the starkly defined features which were said to characterise the Elves of the Second Clan. A very faint vestige of them was in his own king's visage.

“Then you know who we are?” the first elf spoke again, seemingly amused. 

The young man noted the curve of his prominent cheekbones, the stern line of his jaw. He was handsome, but not in a pleasing way. It was an odd impression – beauty ought not to have been so daunting. “I'm a scholar, from Gond -...Ondonórë.” If they were Exiles, they had to speak Quenya. He had often been lauded for his proficiency in the Ancient Tongue, and felt a surge of pride at being able to speak it with the people it belonged to.

“What's your name?” the second elf enquired, passing him a water flask, and switching language too. He had very curly hair that was tied back in a messy ponytail, in marked contrast with the elaborate braids that adorned his companions' smooth hair.

The young man gladly drank. “I'm called Telemmacil.”

“A lofty name,” the first elf commented, and Telemmacil was unable to tell whether it was a compliment or a jibe. Quenya sounded like spicy honey on his lips. “What are you doing so far from home?” 

They were just north of the ford of the River Lhûn, in the thick forest that stretched all the way to the mountains.

“I am travelling to the Ered Luin, to see what is left of the ancient peaks and of the area that was once Thargelion. I am doing research on the Sons of Fëanor.”

A shadow passed on the elf's face. It wasn't surprising: it was well known that the Eldar were loathe to speak about the Fëanorians, and always had been. Apart from the limited information transmitted by Pengolodh's work, and the tales that had been saved from Númenor, very little of what happened during the First Age had been recorded. It was a fact that irked Telemmacil. He was sure there was much more to know. He was tempted to ask his saviours if they had any story to share. Something told him he'd better not.

“Why this interest? They're long gone, and there's nothing left up there of the place it used to be,” the third elf said. He looked impressively like the elf who had first addressed Telemmacil. He had assumed the two might be brothers at first, but they were probably rather twins.

“Historical accuracy,” Telemmacil said, proudly lifting his chin. “There's too much fanciful information about them.”

The first elf lifted an eyebrow in surprise, his displeasure of moments before giving way to close interest.

“Like what?” the fourth elf spoke for the first time.

“The idea that Maglor would still be alive,” Telemmacil promptly replied. It was a subject he had often debated with his fellow students, and with his mentors, weighing all possibilities, and he felt he had a thorough grasp of it. “After throwing away the Silmaril -”

“He threw it away?” the second elf interrupted rather brusquely, but with no apparent hostility. 

“Yes, you don't know? It's in Pengolodh's work.”

“Not the version we read of it,” the fourth elf dryly objected.

Telemmacil rubbed his head in puzzlement. “It must have been a poor edition then.” It was the only logical explanation. It was a pity he didn't have one of the scrolls with him – so many fine editions had been produced in Osgiliath in recent years – but he had decided to travel as lightly, and as swiftly, as possible. He knew those scrolls by heart. “It burned his hand,” he explained, “and he threw it away. The notion of him wandering the shores of the world in pain and regret is poetic, but patently false.”

“How would you know?” the second elf asked, but he still looked more curious than irritated, as the fourth one did.

“How could someone burdened with such guilt, and physically maimed – or unable to do much with his hands, at any rate – survive long, and alone to boot?” reasoned Telemmacil.

“Alone?”

“Yes, of course. His last remaining brother – Maedhros – committed suicide by throwing himself into a fiery chasm.” Telemmacil felt like he was lecturing school children. How could such ancient Elves ignore such basic facts about their own history? “That was omitted in the account you read?”

The first elf raised an eyebrow, but the perplexity in his countenance was definitely overdone. “What Pengolodh wrote is that they got the Silmarilli from the camp of the Valar and then disappeared. They were, according to him, burned by the jewels, but presumably still possess them, and wander aimlessly through the world. 'Fleeting as the leaves on autumn trees' are the exact words.”

“Surely you read -”

“We read one of his autographs,” the third elf stated, and his tone left no room for rebuttal.

“How would he know, anyway? He wrote all that bullshit, but he wasn't following them around. Nobody was following them around, according to his own account. Crap, all of it.”

“But it is a very plausible account, you must concede that,” Telemmacil impulsively retorted, risking the surly elf's anger. The idea that what he knew about the Fëanorians might be wildly inaccurate was distressing. If the knowledge on which he relied (the only knowledge he had) was so imprecise, his current venture was meaningless. It also meant that anything in the records he had studied for so long could be false. Historical accounts were supposed to be truthful and accurate. “Varda's hallowing would have surely caused them to be burnt and, as I said, the guilt alone would have been enough to undo them. It was the only possible outcome of their own misdeeds,” he went on, his enthusiasm for the subject keeping him focused in spite of the confusion and the pain. “Besides, it is fitting that three of them should have died by fire.”.

“Ah yes, Fëanor's fëa consuming his mortally wounded hröa,” the second elf helpfully supplied, and Telemmacil was relieved they could agree on that, at least. “Who's the third?” 

“The youngest son, Amrod.”

“How exactly did he...burn to death?” the third haltingly asked, as if the very question disgusted him, starting to look as galled as the fourth.

“At Losgar, in one of the ships.”

The four elves looked at each other bemusedly. 

“I assume you weren't there,” Telemmacil offered, trying to sound conciliatory. “I admit that's one part of the story which is dubitable, since the only witnesses were Fëanorian supporters, and they might have tampered with it.”

“You don't say,” the fourth spat.

“Are you hungry?” the second elf abruptly changed the subject. “Do you think you can eat? Or are you still dizzy?”

“No...no, I would like some food,” Telemmacil accepted the offer, despite being quite mystified by the conversation and by the Elves' contrasting attitudes. His stomach was painfully empty. He hadn't stopped to eat at midday, eager to reach the path that veered towards the mountains before nightfall by cutting through the forest, and of course his recklessness had had its ruinous consequences. He realised he hadn't even properly thanked the Elves for saving him, and did so as he was presented with a small bowl of dried fruits mixed with some fresher nuts.

They didn't speak much while he ate – the elves asked him about his family but seemed to be uninterested in news about King Eldarion's newly begun reign – and soon Telemmacil became absorbed in his own thoughts. Could what the Elves claimed be true? He was aware there could be errors in manuscripts – mistakes were frequent in the laborious process of copying – but the sort of discrepancies they spoke of presupposed intentional and extensive manipulation of the texts. 

He only noticed the very faint rustling sound somewhere at his back when the first elf stood up and walked past him. The second one stood up too, and shouted cheerfully in greeting, his voice ringing like the purest tinkling of a wind chime. “Nelyo, our young friend here has interesting new information about your death.”

“My death?” the newcomer parroted with manifest amazement.

Telemmacil furrowed his brow. The exchange merely confused him at first. His mind focused on the name. He was sure he had heard it, but couldn't remember where or when. He tried to search his memory, but his head hurt too much. Despairing of making any sense of it, he turned. His eyes widened in disbelief. He knew the newcomer. Or, he believed he did. He had discussed his life – and death – in minute detail. Tall, flaming red hair, one-handed. 

“Maedhros,” he whispered, noticing the two redheads and the silver-haired elf behind him. He quickly turned to look at the others again. What was left of the dried fruits fell half on his legs half on the ground in the rashness of his movement. “Are you...ghosts?” he stuttered. He had probably hit his head harder than he thought, and was having hallucinations. 

The fourth elf snorted and towered over him. “No, we're pretty much alive. Can't you really guess who I am, Lord Know-All?”

Telemmacil gawked at him. He had hardly looked at him before, put off by his silence and then by his bluntness, but now he did, and all fell into place. “C-C-Carnistir.” The two near-identical elves had to be Curufin and...Fëanor himself. He made to stand up, but was stopped.

“No no no, sit down, you're our guest, and you're in no condition to travel right now.” Maglor caught him with strong, perfectly working hands. Telemmacil stiffened, feeling as someone who has just realised the black cat they were petting was in fact a black leopard might feel.

“D-don't kill me...please.” 

Maglor smiled. “We wouldn't have saved you if we were planning to kill you, would we?”

“Search him! He must have snatched the third Silmaril from Eärendil's ship and is hiding it under his clothes!” Caranthir bellowed and leapt forward, pretending to grab at Telemmacil. 

All laughed uproariously.

“Don't scare the boy. He already looks like a wet kitten as it is.” Celegorm eyed the young man curiously while he and the twins put down their catch. “Who is he anyway?”

“A wounded traveller we found in the forest. Turns out he's a historian from Ondonórë who is interested in our story, but believed we were all dead.”

“Talk about coincidences.”

Telemmacil slowly lowered the hands he had raised to protect himself and blushed. “But h-h-how.” He swallowed noisily and tried to regain control over his own voice. “How can this be?”

“You see, what Pengolodh wrote is essentially an...inventive sort of revenge, I'll give him credit for that. They were insulted by the fact that our endeavour didn't meet with complete failure, so he crafted an alternative outcome of it. I suppose he didn't expect it to become the most widely accepted version of events among Men, not so easily at least, but well...after the Valar graciously drowned your homeland, and taking into account your short lifespans, perhaps it's not such a surprising accomplishment.” 

Telemmacil automatically nodded, heedless of the hint of scorn in the elf's words. He was looking into Fëanor's own eyes, listening to him speak, and was terrified, but he didn't know if what underlay the fear was revulsion, or indignation, or even an undue sort of admiration.

“My death isn't an outright fabrication. You see me hale now, but I suffered extensive and severe burns at the hands of the Balrogs, and I was as good as dead for a couple of centuries at least. An invalid, facing a long, agonising recovery. The demons' fire wasn't mere fire. I only started to truly live again after we recovered the Silmarilli from the camp of the Valar.” 

Telemmacil greedily watched as Fëanor rolled back his left sleeve and showed him a patch of skin still marked by intersected streaks similar to a leaf's veining.

“I'm not sure when the stories that my boys also died might have been circulated first – they wouldn't have sounded so far-fetched either, given the chaos that was Beleriand towards the end, but it seems people aren't satisfied by them, if they've started killing off Nelyo and Cáno too, and altering Telvo's death. We were gone for a long time, in the East.”

“Too long,” murmured Curufin. 

“Pengolodh did us a favour, ultimately,” Maglor quickly went on, scooting to sit close to his younger brother. No account had spoken of his peculiar hair, strongly reminiscent of the thick locks of the Men of Harad. “It is easier for us to get by if people believe we are dead. We're not chased after, at least.”

A thought flashed in Telemmacil's discombobulated mind. “But wait- Lord Elrond, he was fostered by-...you.”

“Yes, he only saw Cáno, and Nelyo at times. We kept moving about. It was hard to survive in Beleriand in those days...you know, orcs everywhere, no agriculture, no trade, no other means of procuring food apart from hunting and gathering, if the orcs hadn't poisoned the area. We started boiling and eating the leather fittings we could do without at some point,” Caranthir explained, in a smug bout of loquacity, as he took a knife and started skinning one of the deer his brothers had killed. “Naturally as soon as we got the Silmarilli we hastened out of there as quick as lighting.”

Maedhros sat on Curufin's free side and offered him a handful of rowan berries, wrapping his maimed arm around his body, irrefutable (tangible) proof of his captivity. “It was night when we got into the camp of the Valar.”

“All of us. A pretty neat job, not a soul stirred,” one of the twins clarified, getting to work on a second animal. Telemmacil couldn't have determined which one was which despite all he had read.

“I'm Pityafinwë,” the other one said, and Telemmacil remembered the Eldar could read minds at will. He had been making a fool of himself all along. “We knocked the guards out – very gently,” Amrod said the word in a sardonic tone that implied the act had been everything but gentle, “and took them. The Vanyar never knew what hit them.”

“I still wonder what Eönwë told them.” Amras looked up and met this twin's gaze.

“Well, there could be little doubt as to who might have been after the Silmarilli,” their father grinned, piling wood to lit a fire.

“Whatever he told them, they will have swallowed it like míruvor!”

All laughed again, and Telemmacil thought that they looked terribly commonplace (even a tad vulgar) when they did. And that it was terribly easy to forget that they had visited death upon hundreds of innocents.

“...so you - so you took the Silmarilli and headed East?”

“Exactly” Fëanor replied. “As far east as possible. We settled what was left of out people there, and built a city in a secluded location. It has, thankfully, prospered over the centuries. As you can see, we travel instead, most of the time. Our Oath isn't entirely fulfilled yet, and...it's an old habit.”

“Travelling from unknown place to unknown place together...it was our most cherished way of life, and when we are on the go, like this, it feels like nothing ever went awry. Of course pretty much everything did, and we must steer clear of many dangers, but we have...developed a knack for it, in time,” added Maedhros.

Celegorm nodded cheerfully. “Things might get easier now, with no pesky repentant Exiles around anymore.”

“The Silmarilli?” Telemmacil ventured, his curiosity and inquisitiveness timidly peeking through the astonishment. He couldn't believe they had them. It went against all ideas of right and wrong. It was unfair.

“One is in our town. I made sure nobody would ever be able to steal it again. The other...well, it's somewhere under your bum right now. It is my cape you're sitting on.”

Before Telemmacil fully realized what Fëanor's words meant, the elf crouched in front of him and put a hand on his shoulder, while the other sneaked under the mantle – and under his buttocks – and groped until it found what he sought. Telemmacil blushed more furiously than before, all the more so when he noticed the mischievous glance shared by the brothers. 

“Here it is.” Fëanor took his right hand and made to drop the jewel in it, but Telemmacil instinctively tried to pull it away. “Don't worry, you're not going to be scalded. Why would Varda want you to be burned simply because you're human? Isn't it hard to reconcile your idea of her as a merciful deity with such an arbitrary inequity?”

Telemmacil's eyes were riveted to Fëanor's face. He was mesmerising up close. Telemmacil thought of the Eastern witches who were said to be able to turn people into stone with their gaze alone. He shook his head – a few scholars did question the terms of Varda's hallowing, though he had tried to ignore their theories – and accepted the Silmaril from Fëanor himself. It looked like a regular gem. It was only slightly warm (and it occurred to him it might be simply because he had been sitting on it). “But...Varda-...?”

“What kind of effectiveness would a hallowing such as the one Pengolodh describes have had if Morgoth could hold on to the Silmarilli for a full half millennium, and Beren wasn't burned though he was mortal and a very violent and selfish fellow?” Fëanor wryly questioned.

“Selfish?”

“How would you call someone who only thinks about getting married in the midst of a desperate war against a Vala intent on destroying or subduing everybody? His beloved and he completely ignored the horror that prospered within Angband. I was there.” 

“But he was a hero,” Telemmacil couldn't help but protest, even confronted with Maedhros's causticity. The people of Gondor still prided themselves on being descended from Beren, he was the paragon of everything that a man should be. 

“He did excel at hiding behind his beloved's Maiarin tricks.” Telemmacil turned to look at Caranthir, trying not to focus on his blood-stained hands. “Varda hallowed the Silmarilli in the sense that she wanted to appropriate them. Bitch failed.” 

“The Doom?”

“Bitches all failed, from groomed useless doll Manwë to stinking rotten corpse Námo.”

Telemmacil grimaced at language. Caranthir's harshness didn't seem to have been exaggerated, but he found little comfort in the reflection. His head hurt more than before. No matter how his mind tried to grapple, the reality of what he saw wouldn't change. 

“...don't look so dejected,” Fëanor urged, and he sounded strangely soothing. “I can imagine your...disappointment. You can ignore all you've learnt here, if it makes it easier for you. History is a tale, first and foremost. There are some indisputable facts, to be sure, but the rest? It is a vagary.”

“A vagary?”

“No two people ever tell the same tale...look, go to sleep. We promise we will be gone by the time you wake up again, so you can pretend it was all a dream, all right?”

Telemmacil bit his lower lip. “I- I don't know” he stammered out after a while. On the one hand he did want to forget and go back to what he had known and believed up until a few minutes before. On the other, it would have been absurd to pass on the chance to hear the story from those who had lived it, even if it was only _their_ truth.

Fëanor narrowed his eyes. He turned and looked at his sons, and they seemed to reach a silent agreement. “We will tolerate your lack of decisiveness on account of your injury. We will move somewhere nearby. If you decide you want to meet us again, you will have to look for us.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for the mix of Quenya and Sindarin names, pretend they're using Quenya throughout.


End file.
